I’ve received 8 or 9 queries in the past few days that all go something like this…

“You’re a a Mac guy… Have you got the iPhone 6 yet?”“omg you didn’t pre-order? It’s the best thing ever! So much better than that other phone that’s just like it!”“You’re not getting the new iPhone, are you? It’s just like that other phone that’s so much better”“Which should I get, phone A or phone B?”

I don’t know why folks give a crap about what phone I have, or why they think my opinion on such things actually matters, but allow me to address all the inquiries in one snarky post.

Yes, I have Apple products, but I’m not a “Mac Guy.” For what I wanted to do on a day-to-day basis, Apple products made the most sense for me. I also, however, have a PC on a desk behind me that I built myself for gaming, because Apple doesn’t meet that particular need of mine very well.

No, I didn’t pre-order the iPhone 6. I’m not even going to get the iPhone 6.

Because my iPhone 5 works just fine, that’s why. Why would I spend that kind of money to replace a phone that does everything I need it to do? I’m a teacher. I have better things to do with the little bit of surplus cash I have, thank you very much. Like buy beer. And pizza. And bacon. Well, hell… now I’m hungry.

Will you please stop bashing iPhone. And you over there… stop bashing those Android phones. Holy crap, you drive me crazy. It’s just a phone. You make this far more complicated and controversial than it really is.

I have no idea which you should get. My phone works great, so I haven’t done any research on any phone in the last two years. And I don’t plan on doing any research on any phone until the phone I have no longer does what I need and/or want it to do.

No, I don’t have time to do your research for you. Do your own damn research.

Holy moley you are persistent. Fine. Here’s some general advice. On individual slips of paper, write down the make and model of every phone that is causing you to lose sleep. Now, put those 2 slips of paper into a shoebox (because you’re just making a choice between Samsung and Apple, aren’t you? Can you even name another phone? No? How very telling). Put the lid on the shoebox. Shake the crap out of the shoebox. Close your eyes. Take the lid off the shoebox. Reach in and pull out one of the 2 slips of paper. There. You just decided which phone to buy.

Yes, really. Because when you’re talking about the top-of-the-line models from Samsung, Apple, LG, HTC, etc., they all do the same damn thing and you’ll never use whatever phone you get to its full capacity, anyway. You’ll text, and you’ll post to Facebook, and you’ll take pictures, and you’ll check email, and you’ll listen to music, and you’ll play videos, and you’ll play games. And you can do all of that on any of the big-name phones out there. At the end of the day, the basis of your decision is not going to be which phone performs which function best. Your biggest consideration is going to be which phone do you want your friends to see you with, and perhaps whatever media-contrived pseudo-political statement you imagine you are making. And that’s fine. But you don’t need my advice, or anyone else’s advice for that matter, to figure that out. Pick one at random. For the first 6 months you’ll love whichever one you pick, and then you’ll spend the next 6 months bitching about it because you’ve heard about what “the next big thing” is going to be able to do.

And in 12 months, you’re going to ask me the same silly questions and I’ll be able to point to this post because the only things that will have changed are the model numbers.

I don’t always do the Throwback Thursday thing, but when I do, I usually try to embarrass myself (or someone else whom I know can take it).

Usually.

But this time, as I was digging through boxes and envelopes and picking out some juicy possibilities – my sister came very close to being the target this week – as I was digging and shuffling, I came across this one tucked away in an old photo album.

(click to enlarge – opens a new tab)

Back in the ’80s, good ol’ Pittsford-Mendon High School was the king of the soccer pitch – both the boys’ and the girls’ teams. Our football team, which I played on, wasn’t the greatest by any stretch of the imagination, but our soccer teams kicked much butt.

Most of the girls here I still recognize, and I’ve even touched base with a few of them a time or two over on Facebook. But nowhere in my memory do I ever remember them being as happy and as beautiful as they all are in this moment. Look at the smiles! Arm in arm in excitement and joy. The culmination of hard work and the acquisition of a dream.

Thanks, girls. For a while there, you were our heroes – the folks we (yes, even the boys – and especially the football team!) wanted to be.

This book is a beast. What’s more, it’s a joyously ridiculous beast. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did Anathem (nor will it, I suspect, stick with me as long as the brilliantly mind-numbing Anathem), but it’s a surprisingly fast-paced read for such a huge book.

Most often, I thought of the book as a satire of the “big book” phenomenon that is sweeping though so many genres these days. For while the storylines are tightly woven, still they sprawl – not just from chapter to chapter, but also around the globe. The plot twists and turns are engrossing yet ridiculous, the characterizations enjoyable yet laughable. The story itself is a romp and seems to mock itself – mock not just what it is, but also what it isn’t.

Which isn’t what I was expecting at all, so it took me a good while to make the adjustment. I’m used to Stephenson’s ultra-intelligent examinations of social and technical constructs. Reamde, however, seems to be rooted in how ludicrous the whole thing is. The vast majority of characters are static stereotypes – tropes that are easily identifiable and, somewhat fascinatingly, just as easily relatable.

As usual, it takes about 200 pages for Stephenson to really get things moving, but when he does it’s virtually a non-stop game of cat and mouse as characters chase one another (or try to escape from one another) from the US to China to Canada and a host of other international locations. With several different (but closely related and/or intertwined) storylines going on at the same time, Stepehson has plenty to work with to keep the reader cruising along at a good clip. His handling of the pacing is one of the main strengths of the book.

The weakness, for me at any rate, is that this just isn’t that “smart” a story – not in the traditional Stephenson-sense, anyway. Even though I ended up reading it as a satire, I still couldn’t get past just how “stupid” it all felt – how the story just didn’t seem to work, how plot twists never felt quite honest, how character decisions and actions often didn’t feel quite justified.

At the end of the day, when I finally turned that 1044th page, I was glad to be shut of it. I didn’t want to read any more about these characters or their absurd situations. It’s a decent read, and I recommend it to fans of Stephenson, but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who has never read him before.